David T. Warner “More of Our Own Giants” October 6, 2011 Honored Alumni I don’t feel a day older than the day when I first walked through the doors of this building, and that was when I was seven years old. I don’t know how I heard about it, but KBYUtv was looking for a child actor. Somehow I knew that over at Wasatch Elementary across Ninth East. So after school, without telling anyone, I came over. I found the secretary and she said they weren’t auditioning for this part, and I said, “Oh that’s all right: I’m the person that you want.” And she was either so amused or annoyed—I don’t know which—that she called John Apgar, the director, and he came into the office and took me to the studio, and he had me do some little scenes. When I finally got home at about seven o’clock, I told my very worried parents that they “didn’t have to worry. I was now a movie star.” And that’s how I began my life in the College of Fine Arts and Communications. I wish I had the time to tell you what’s been going through my mind over the past few weeks. There were tremendous contributions from faculty members and students to my life. Many of them I met during those 14 years before I actually enrolled as a student. I was in this building a lot: I was taking lessons here, part of the BYU Children’s Chorus, playing children and youth roles in plays and operas and television programs—various presentations. I found every possible opportunity to get involved in what was happening in the costume shop and the scene shop and the art studio and the make-up lab. I had a wonderful childhood in this building. Other kids play sports and build tree-houses and I feel sorry for them. My boyhood dreams always had to do with the arts. Because my parents taught us the gospel when we were very young I was naturally interested in what the prophets had to say about my childhood aspirations. This quote from President Spencer W. Kimball, which I think you probably know well, was one of many that captured my imagination: “Take a da Vinci or a Michelangelo or a Shakespeare and give him a total knowledge of the plan of salvation of God and personal revelation and cleanse him, and then take a look at the statues he will carve and the murals he will paint and the masterpieces he will produce. Take a Handel with his purposeful effort, his superb talent, his earnest desire to properly depict the story, and give him inward vision of the whole true story and revelation, and what a master you have!” And that’s how I would have read that, as a 14-year-old boy, when it was first given. I focused on words, like teenagers do. Words like “masterpiece,” “talent,” “effort,” “vision.” And famous names like “Michelangelo” and “Shakespeare.” I wanted to do something great, like they had done. I wanted to make a difference in the world. Well, as we all do, I grew up. I had wonderful experiences in my youth. I went on a mission, got married, and served the Church. And then one night in a hospital delivery room, I had an experience that changed me forever. It changed my perspective. Completely. Warner 2 “More of Our Own Giants” Holding my firstborn in my arms, I knew that I would never think of the arts in the same way again. Up to that time it never occurred to me that what artists and what parents do are very closely connected. The creator of all things isn’t just an artist—putting things together to make them beautiful. He is our Heavenly Father, using all his creativity and all his artistry to help us develop and to grow. President Uchtdorf taught this truth in General Conference: “God Himself said we are the reason He created the universe! His work and glory—the purpose for this magnificent universe—is to save and exalt mankind. In other words, the vast expanse of eternity, the glories and mysteries of infinite space and time are all built for the benefit of ordinary mortals like you and me. Our Heavenly Father created the universe that we might reach our potential as His sons and daughters.” Well that night in the hospital I could not sleep. I remember singing over and over again a little lullaby about awakening because I was awakening. I could see that parenting is truly the work of creation. Of helping another living soul open up and become like God. At the same time, with the call of fatherhood now beating strongly in my own heart, many years of insights and experiences were starting to come into focus for me, and I could see myself becoming an artist of a completely different kind. The years that followed were packed with professional creative activities and Allison and I were in the middle of the most important work of our lives—which is to raise two wonderful boys. But the interplay between these two parts—the professional and the creative part and the more important part, parenthood—brought many questions to my mind like, What if I approach making this film or staging this play or writing this lyric in the same way that I approach being a parent to my sons? Because as a father my question is not, What do I want to do? But, What do my children need? Not, What do I want to say? but, What would it help them to hear? I ask myself, What if my primary concern was for the needs of my audience? Their flourishing in the gospel and their experience in mortality, what if that was my primary objective? And all of those kinds of questions brought a much more fundamental question to my mind. And it was something like this: What would I need to be and become in order to use the arts in the work of creation for the sake of helping Heavenly Father’s children learn and grow and become like Him? So today I’d like to share with you a few personal experiences that have helped me in my personal quest to answer that question. And I am nowhere in the journey except at the beginning, so I share these as kind of report along the way, mindful that you have your own reports to make about this journey towards understanding how we use what we’ve been given and how we become the kind of people that can do the work of creation. The work of helping Heavenly Father’s children return home. Here’s an experience: When I was a student here Walter Rudolph, who was the manager of KBYU-FM, arranged with his good friend Giorgio Tozzi to come to BYU. I wish you knew him. Giorgio came and gave a concert with the Philharmonic Orchestra and it was up in the Tabernacle and then he taught a master class here. Giorgio is a world-renowned bass/baritone who had sung in all the major opera houses of the world—500 performances in the Metropolitan Opera alone—and his recordings are still a benchmark for opera singers all around the world. You may know him because he dubbed the voice of Rossano Brazzi in the film version of South Pacific. He’s the one who sang “Some Enchanted Evening.” Because Giorgio had such a wonderful experience at BYU he agreed to fly up from California once each week to give a day’s worth of voice lessons, as long as those voice lessons were open to everyone in the Warner 3 “More of Our Own Giants” School of Music. Because I had the opportunity to speak with him, I also had the opportunity to volunteer to meet him at the airport and drive him down to Provo every week. Now the first thing I noticed about Giorgio was that he was intensely interested in me. When he talked about himself it was only to tell me about his family, whom he loved, or to answer one of my questions or to teach me a principle. I always, always said that what attracted people to Giorgio was not music or singing: it was doing good. One time he said, “David, I wasn’t a kind person before I played Hans Sachs.” Hans Sachs is the warm and generous central character to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger. He said, “The role of Hans Sachs changed me. Being Hans in the opera helped me learn how to love other people.” That has stuck with me for 25 years. Here was an artist who was at the top of his field, who could have easily become self-absorbed. Yet he was constantly focused on meeting other peoples’ needs. For example, once Giorgio was teaching a baritone by the name of John. While John was singing Giorgio stood up, came up close to him and felt right under his rib cage. He said, quietly and sensitively, “Are you wearing an extra belt under there? John, are you wearing a strap?” John went beet-red and said, “How can you tell?” Giorgio said, “I couldn’t tell from your singing, but I could tell you were worried about something. You know, John, you don’t need that belt. What you need to do is plant a seed of faith like Alma said.